


I Walked With You Once

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 03:24:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12448662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: It is said within the vast reaches of Auradon that dreams are an extension of the soul, nightly wishes that a heart makes. It is said within the vast reaches of Auradon that soulmates, in and of themselves extensions of one another’s soul, can meet within the realm of dreams to explore untold worlds and lands as one, night after night, wish after wish.





	I Walked With You Once

**Author's Note:**

> from an anonymous request on tumblr

 

Mal didn't dream.  
  
It was not a thing that happened to her.  
  
Her mother had this whole shtick with sleep, you see, and dreaming simply wasn't in Mal's blood.  
 _  
"Before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday, she shall prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel...and die!"_  
  
She'd heard of the sensation, of course, of traveling to far-off places, encountering the impossible, the mundane, and the just plain crazy.  
  
 _"...Don't despair, your majesties. Merryweather still has her gift to give."  
  
"...Not in death, but just in sleep, the fateful prophecy you'll keep."_  
  
Mal knew better than to miss what she never had.  So she didn't have dreams. Big deal. Yet still, some days she couldn't seem to stop herself from secretly hanging on to every word when Jay spoke of his father's dreams of piles of gold coins, or when Carlos spoke of being kidnapped by alley cats and challenged to a game of cards.  
  
 _"And from this slumber you shall wake, when true love's kiss the spell shall break."_  
  
Every night was blackness, a formless void where time passed indiscernibly, in quick and speeding increments or dragging, listless crawls.  There were no piles of gold coins for Mal, no alley cats partaking in a far too literal round of Go Fish. For sixteen years, every night of laying down and closing her eyes was blackness, a formless void.  
  
Until one night, it was a castle.  
  
Mal laid in bed and closed her eyes only to open them again and find herself in a garden, the vast architecture of stone looming over her.  There was a thick, dense fog all around her, but the towers stretched high enough to break through the mist and give Mal a glimpse of the parapets, and assure her that it was indeed a castle overlooking the garden.  
  
And Mal, who had never dreamt before, who laid in bed and closed her eyes only to open them again and find herself before a grand castle, panicked.  
  
Mal was not prone to panic. As her mother's daughter, it was another thing that simply wasn't in her blood.  But she didn't know where she was, how she'd gotten there, what in the world was happening. And the fog seemed to press in on her, the castle stood like a massive and menacing monster, even the flowers in the garden threatened the promise of thorns and poison. So Mal panicked.  
  
Woke up in a cold sweat in the dark of her room.  
  
Shook and shivered, clutching her sheets tightly in her fists and staying that way until sunrise, not daring to close her eyes again.  
  
Jay and Carlos immediately saw the heaviness in her gaze the next day at school. Idly walking with Mal on their way to their first class.  She was too drained to hide the secret, and gave in to the boys' curious prodding without a fight. She dredged to mind a word, a word she'd heard the two use sparingly in their talks of dreams.  
  
"I...had a nightmare last night," she said through muttering lips.  
  
Carlos stopped in his tracks.  
  
"You??"  
  
Mal's inability to dream was no secret to them, but certainly regarded as more than just a quirk. So she leaned back against the lockers and explained, explained about the garden, the castle, the fog, the foreboding. Jay's subsequent frown was puzzled.  
  
"...Mal, that's not a nightmare," he in turn explained. "Nightmares are like, monsters chasing you. Ghosts and ghouls."  
  
"Bear traps coming to life and attacking," Carlos muttered.  
  
"Scary stuff," Jay went on.  
  
But Mal stuck by her phrasing; she had been plenty scared.  
  
Try as she might, she couldn't fight it that evening; she was too exhausted to beat back sleep. It overtook her so quickly that she couldn't even use her last conscious thought to wish for the blackness, the emptiness in which she'd spent her sleep for her entire life.  
  
No such luck.  
  
There it was again, the garden just beyond the castle front, and the castle itself shrouded in fog. This time, panic was the one thing she  _could_  fight, and the rebel in her spirit did just that. A shivering mess she would  _not_  be upon waking, she clung to just enough consciousness within her dream to make that resolution then and there. But what was she to do, all alone in that garden of color, color muted by the haze of fog?  
  
She took a step forward. Then another. Shuffling blindly through the mist. Step by step along a neatly trimmed lawn, to be rewarded by a short stone staircase leading right up to the castle's front doors. By reflex she put a hand on the stone handrail, a jolt of something icy coursing through her entire body at feeling just how  _real_ it was. The coarseness of the rock under her fingertips, and the damp from the fog. It was so real under her touch. It was too real.   
  
And she awoke with a start in another cold sweat.  
  
On the third night, Mal ascended the steps with fiercely clenched fists, not daring to lay a finger on the handrails or anything else. She would not touch, would not feel, even did her best to tune out the sensation of earth and rock under her feet. She made it all the way to the grand front doors, but would not reach out to them.  
  
And awoke with a gasp and a sharp intake of breath.  
  
As much as she loathed to, she confided in Jay and Carlos. Going to them for help, for why she was stuck with this recurring vision of a clouded castle when the way she understood it, people were to have different dreams. The boys had nothing to offer, it was still a mystery to them as to why Mal had even started dreaming in the first place.  
  
Every night just the same, that twisted castle, the walk through the garden and up the doors; every night awaking just as she reached the sturdy mahogany, never to continue any further. How Mal longed for her safe and quiet blackness again, for her sleep to pass silently and unknowingly, instead of being trapped in what  _she_  was sure was some form of nightmare, reliving the monotonous walk over and over again. She knew she'd go crazy if this kept up. Waking up each morning and closing her eyes each evening it was there in the back of her mind, how she couldn't handle this nonsense of dreams if this was all it entailed. It had to stop.  
  
And one night, it did.  
  
One night, she made it inside the castle.

* * *

 

Evie didn't dream.  
  
It was not a thing that happened to her.  
  
Her mother had this whole shtick with sleep, you see, and dreaming simply wasn't in Evie's blood.  
  
 _"...One taste of the poisoned apple, and the victim's eyes will close forever in the Sleeping Death..."_  
  
But oh, how she wished she  _could_ dream.  
  
Day in and day out for ten years she lay stuck within the walls of her mother's castle, wandering corridors of stone with only the windows and the occasional gift-bearing vulture as her conduit to the outside world. She would admit, The Isle of the Lost was not much to look at through the glass or over the stone railing of her balcony, but still, she longed to be out there.   
  
Every night she would lay down and close her eyes, knowing only emptiness awaited her, a realm of lonely darkness for her to drift through hour by hour until the sun once again rose to pull her out of it.  Every night she would lay down and close her eyes, wishing with all her heart that she would open them and find herself in another world, another realm, one where she had left the castle behind and walked free, free to do anything and everything she could ever imagine (and even a few things she couldn't).  
  
It was her deepest wish, one she'd spent a decade placing upon the second star to the right that she couldn't see from The Isle yet knew was still out there somewhere. With her mother never too far away, Evie knew placing wishes upon stars was far safer than placing them upon apples, and one night,  _one night_ , her ten year long wish paid off.  
  
Or so she thought.  
  
She didn't lay herself down to sleep only to return to empty, imposing blackness. When she laid herself down to sleep that night, she awoke somewhere else.  
  
Within the walls of a castle. Oh, no. Not that, anything but that.  
  
A dream was meant to be her escape, her way  _out_  of the castle, not back  _in_  one. She had found herself on the floor of a stately master bedroom in this castle, and quickly scrambled to her feet to race to the door. A maze of tangled, identical hallways awaited her outside the room, an all too familiar sight. She knew then and there that if she even tried to venture out she'd find herself lost, wandering corridor after corridor with no way out.  
  
And her own terribly frightened gasp woke her up, her eyes snapping open and her hands gripping her sheets. She didn't know whether she thought or whether she hoped it was just a freak occurrence, but that next night, what she was wishing more than anything was to  _not_  dream, to not have her hopes of escaping her mother's castle for just a few hours dashed away just like that. But no, the following evening, there she was again, trading one prison for another. This time, she felt she had to at least try.  
  
Slowly, and more calmly, she rose to her feet. Took them step by step to the door of the master bedroom, swinging it open to peer into the first of many hallways. She had to try to find her way out. She stayed close to the walls as she moved, trying to make her dreaming self follow a pattern; just keep to the left, if she kept to the left she could retrace her steps if needed. But her dreaming mind was muddled, and the harder she tried to concentrate, the more she lost her focus. What she thought was a turn to the left may have actually been a turn to the right, or even several turns to the right. She had no idea, everything seemed to be lost in a fog.  
  
And before she knew it, she was indeed lost, lost the way she always feared she would be in her mother's castle. The wallpaper all looked the same, the elegant sconces too. Nothing served as some sort of marker, or waypoint, and once more, there was no way out.  
  
Her heart raced almost painfully in her chest when she jolted awake just at the start of sunrise.  
  
It quickly took a toll on her, the horror of being confined within the walls in both sleep and wakefulness. Her mother would never understand. Her mother would chide her for not getting her beauty sleep. So Evie suffered alone, night after night, sometimes waking up feeling almost driven to tears at her sheer helplessness, at her isolation. She couldn't take much more of being alone like this, she couldn't take much more of being the one soul lost and afraid within the corridors.   
  
And one night, she didn't have to. One night, she miraculously made it through the maze, finding herself at the top of the grand staircase, leaning incredulously over the gallery railing and looking down upon the magnificent castle foyer.  
  
Where in front of the massive wood doors, a wide-eyed girl with purple hair was looking right back up at her.

* * *

 

They met halfway without saying a word, Evie slowly descending the staircase and joining up with the girl in the center of the stone floor. For a little while they just continued to stare quietly at each other, both wide-eyed, neither sure if the other was real. Well, of course that stunning girl with the sparkling brown eyes wasn't real, this was just Mal's dream. And of course the girl with the narrowed green gaze wasn't real, it was only part of Evie's dream. But figment or not, how Evie relished the sight of another soul, and how her shocked, parted lips curved upwards into a smile.  
  
"...Hello," she gave a short bow of her head, a greeting her mother had trained her to reserve for princes that was the only greeting she could call to mind at the moment.  
  
"...Hey," the girl in front of her warily said back.  
  
"...I'm Evie," a slight curtsy, another gesture reserved for a prince.  
  
"...Mal."  
  
Mal had a warning glimmer of caution in her eyes, beginning to back away from Evie. She knew perfectly well that a dream could feature other people, other players in the story that unfolded in her mind.  
  
She just never imagined she could dream up someone so vivid.  
  
Evie didn't care about the details, she was just so incredibly relieved to have someone else there with her, so elated to see a face that wasn't her own or her mother's that she did not care in the slightest if this was just a dream.  
  
They didn't say much after their initial greetings, in fact, they didn't say anything at all.  _How do you talk with a dream person?_ Mal wondered.   
  
"I'm so happy to see you," Evie started the conversation for her.  
  
"...Me?" Mal questioned.  
  
Evie nodded exuberantly.  
  
"Anyone, really. I've been trapped here in this castle, lost in the corridors."  
  
"For how long?" Mal asked.  
  
Evie shrugged, her happy smile turning down into a saddened one.  
  
"...Feels like forever."  
  
Mal looked around.  
  
"Is this your castle?"  
  
"It might as well be," Evie laughed half-heartedly.  
  
It was then that she looked past Mal, looked to the huge double doors of the castle's entrance.   
  
The doors that led outside.  
  
She brushed past Mal, resting her hand on the smooth, carved wood the exact opposite way Mal had done—avoiding the touch of the doors at all costs.  
  
"...Will you come outside with me?" Evie asked, not up to being alone, even if it was to step just outside the walls of the castle.  
  
"I guess," Mal shrugged. "I mean, there's nothing out there but a bunch of fog, but whatever."  
  
Evie was not deterred, and with a sparkle in her eyes and no time to hesitate, she threw the front doors wide.  
  
And they saw that it was the farthest thing from a bunch of fog. Even Mal, with her relative apathy to the unusual turn her dream had taken, found herself caught up in a gasp of surprise.  
  
The clouded garden courtyard was no more, and before the doors laid a sprawling forest. A lush, thick canopy filtered in thin streams of sunlight like little rivers, spotting the forest floor in patches of gold where the beams touched. The air was alive with a concert of chirping birds, buzzing insects, visiting breezes, curious whispers of creatures hidden within the leaves.  
  
"Oh my  _gosh._.." Evie breathed. She covered her mouth with a hand, hiding her dropping jaw.  
  
Evie, banished to her mother's castle, had never seen anything like it.  
  
Mal, banished to The Isle of the Lost, had never seen anything like it.  
  
So this was everything that a dream could be.  
  
Evie was done caring. Done caring that none of this was real, done caring about how any of it was happening, done caring about sixteen years of training that told her a princess should never run, it simply wasn't ladylike.  
  
She ran.  
  
"Come on, Mal!!" Evie yelled over her shoulder, her words touched with the brightest laugh she had ever allowed herself to give.  
  
And in that one moment, Mal was done caring that she was Maleficent's daughter, the princess of evil, a scourge, a blight, a plague on goodness and purity.  
  
She ran too, bare feet chasing after the dream girl along the soft, mossy forest floor. Flowers Mal had never seen on The Isle or even imagined could exist bloomed all over, a blur of colors as she raced past. She didn't see them or their glow, but she could feel the fairies and sprites that called the forest home, sensed them nearby and how they were watching the girls run so, so carefree. At the rocky bank of a forest stream did Evie tire herself out, and breathless, she dropped to the ground, laughter struggling to come out. Mal bent over, rested her hands on her knees. Listened to the fairies talking about them in tiny voices high above.  
  
Only when she caught her breath did Mal look up, taking in the sight of Evie trying to do the same. The girl was _so_ real,  _so_ vivid, and yet, at the same time, everything about her was decidedly  _un_ real. The pink flush to her cheeks, the softness of her hair, the softness of her entire figure as she sat daintily at the water's edge.  
  
Evie was amazed she could dream up someone like Mal, amazed that she who had never dreamed before in her life could create that name, that face—with those piercing eyes, the pouting lips, the occasional crinkle to her nose. She was beautiful, and Evie had no shame of vanity in admitting she knew beauty when she saw it.  
  
"...I feel like you found me," Evie suddenly said to her own surprise, having no idea where those words came from.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I feel like I was lost inside the castle for  _ages_  until you came in to find me."  
  
Mal shook her head.  
  
"I wasn't looking for you."  
  
"And I wasn't looking for you," Evie said. "But we found each other just the same."  
  
Mal drew closer, picking out a green, moss-covered log and having a seat beside Evie. Her eyes were pulled to the stream, crystal clear, flowing down the slight slope of the forest floor in the tiniest of waterfalls.  
  
"...I don't think I'm so scared of the castle anymore, or so lonely. So thank you," Evie said, turning her earthen brown gaze on Mal.  
  
Those eyes, another thing that was so real yet unreal at the same time.  
  
"You're lonely?" Mal questioned.  
  
Evie nodded.  
  
"Very...but not here. Not now."  
  
And neither was Mal. No longer was she feeling left out and alone for never having dreams, no longer was she wondering what was wrong with her that whole worlds of magic and unreality couldn't unfold within her mind night after night. Yes, Mal knew better than to miss what she never had, but without an ability to dream, deep down she felt...fractured. But as Evie had said, not here. And not now. Now, seeing Evie, seeing this incredible place...she felt whole.  
  
"I hope I'll come back here tomorrow night," Evie said, picking up a twig and stirring the water of the stream.  
  
"...Tomorrow night? Whose dream is this, anyway?" Mal smirked.  
  
"I thought it was mine."  
  
"Pretty sure it's mine," Mal denied.  
  
Evie smiled at her.  
  
"That's okay, Mal. It can be ours."  
  
Mal did not awaken with a cold sweat, or a pounding heartbeat. Mal awoke with fluttering eyes, blinking calmly and peacefully in the dim daylight fighting through the curtains.  
  
Evie didn't wake with a fistful of sheets bunched into curled, whitened fingers, or a pulse thudding deafeningly in her ears. Evie woke up with a steady, serene beating in her chest, a warmth in her body. A smile on her face.  
  
Portents of the day that awaited her, when her mother strolled in on a sewing session and mused about how Maleficent had most likely forgotten all about their banishment and how it was probably safe for them to leave the castle now. Evie had only felt such sheer elation one other time in her life.  
  
Mere hours ago, racing through an enchanted forest with a purple-haired figment at her side.

* * *

 

"Did you hear?" Jay began, leaning his shoulder on the locker beside Mal's. "New student starts today."  
  
Mal rolled her eyes, jamming one textbook into her locker in favor of yanking out another one.  
  
"Great," she muttered. "Someone to stumble around stupidly all day like one of the Lost Boys."  
  
"I dunno, Mal. I hear she's a princess," Jay grinned and waggled his eyebrows. "Someone to bring a little class to good ol' Dragon Hall."  
  
"She wishes," Mal scoffed.  
  
"Guys!"  
  
Carlos' voiced turned both of their heads as he approached, but he did not approach alone.  
  
"Hey, guys," he stopped in front of his friends. "This is the new girl, it's her first day. VKs, meet—"  
  
Impossibly deep blue hair. The absolute warmest of brown eyes. Full lips that were capable of curving into the most enchanting of smiles.  
  
"...Evie," Mal breathed.  
  
Jade green eyes that were wide with wonder. Dimples hiding in plain sight within the fair skin. The pouting lips parted with the same wonder that shone in her eyes, the same wonder Evie already felt like she knew somewhere deep inside.  
  
"...Mal," she whispered.  
  
Carlos frowned, and Jay followed.  
  
"Uh, you two know each other?" Carlos asked.  
  
Stunned for far less a time than she would've thought, Mal somehow managed to shake herself back to her senses. Was she still asleep? Impossible. Was it all in her head? Couldn't be. What it was was something far beyond her imagining, forces beyond the magic that couldn't penetrate The Isle. Something brand new and strange.  
  
Something amazing.  
  
"...Yeah. I know her," Mal slowly nodded.  
  
That most enchanting smile curving Evie's lips, the same smile Mal already felt like she knew somewhere deep inside, inside her  _soul_.  
  
"And you know  _her_??" Jay asked of Evie.  
  
Evie's smile refused to falter. Face to face with Mal, she felt as if it would never, ever falter again.  
  
"I know her...I walked with her, once upon a dream."


End file.
